The abortion chain Planned Parenthood will argue against a Texas law Monday that requires its abortion facilities to bury or cremate aborted babies’ remains.
The law, which passed in June, helps to ensure that aborted babies’ bodies are not sold and are treated with dignity and respect. It requires that abortion facilities, hospitals and other health clinics to bury or cremate the remains of aborted and miscarried babies. Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocacy groups lobbied against the bill, but the legislature passed it with strong support.
Abortion activists have not given up the fight. On Monday, Planned Parenthood is scheduled to argue against the law at a hearing in front of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, Spectrum News reports.
Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion chain in the United States, claims the law threatens women’s health and safety and makes it harder for them to abort their unborn babies, according to the report. More specifically, they claim the cost of cremating or burying the aborted babies creates an undue burden on women’s access to abortion.
However, Texas health department spokesperson Carrie Williams previously said their research indicates that the measure will not increase costs.
“While the methods described in the new rules may have a cost, that cost is expected to be offset by costs currently being spent by facilities on disposition for transportation, storage, incineration, steam disinfection and/or landfill disposal,” Williams said.
Last year, Texas also attempted to require a proper burial for aborted babies through rules set up by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. However, abortion activists also challenged those rules, and a judge later blocked them.
Serious concerns about the treatment of human remains are a key motive behind the new law.
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During a Texas health commission hearing in August 2016, supporters said the rules are necessary because abortion facilities treat unborn babies’ bodies like garbage and sometimes dump them down public sewer drains, Fox 7 reported. Texas state Rep. Mark Keough mentioned a gruesome case in 2005 when a woman who worked near a Houston abortion facility saw tiny aborted babies’ limbs and other body parts in a parking lot when a sewer line broke.
More states are moving to require dignified burials of aborted babies’ bodies after undercover videos revealed evidence that Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities may be selling aborted babies’ body parts. The Center for Medical Progress videos prompted a number of states and the U.S. House and Senate to open investigations into the matter.
Late last week, news broke that the U.S. Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into Planned Parenthood and other groups associated with the trafficking of aborted baby body parts.
In Ohio, the state attorney general’s investigation found that Planned Parenthood was “steam cooking” aborted babies’ bodies before dumping them in landfills. A state investigation in South Carolina also caught Planned Parenthood facilities illegally dumping aborted babies’ bodies in public landfills, and fined them for it.
Two biotech companies that worked with Planned Parenthood also are closing after they admitted liability for violating laws prohibiting the sales of aborted baby body parts.
